


Fixing a Heart of Metal

by PoisonFromTheHeart



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Androids, Homestuck AU, M/M, More - Freeform, Robot AU, Robots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 19:17:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1754995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoisonFromTheHeart/pseuds/PoisonFromTheHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cold metal and machinery can not hold a soul. A wired brain is made of nothing but 1’s and 0’s, rules and regulations, there was no emotion, no opinion, no heart. So what should make him any different?<br/>**************<br/>Injured Android!Jake finds himself breaking into a certain mechanic's workshop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fixing a Heart of Metal

**Author's Note:**

> REWRITTEN  
> I have fixed a few things so I can actually turn this into a fic, rather then a prompt. Reread if you wish!

 

In a world of humans, robots were nothing but servants. Animals that were only smart enough to clean the house and fetch groceries. The lazy man’s pet so to say. Robots had no rights, not protection, nothing to stop the destructiveness of the human’s power. All because cold metal and machinery could not hold a soul. A wired brain is made of nothing but 1’s and 0’s, rules and regulations, there was no emotion, no opinion, not heart. So what should make him any different?

 

Jake is what he called himself. At least, it was the name that his ‘grandmother’ had given him. She was his creator, his mother, his entire world. She taught him and nurtured him, told him that he was special, that he was made different from all the others. That he had the power of ‘choice’.

 

He could choose to follow the rules, he could choose how he reacted in a situation, he was more than just a cold and empty android. Jake was different. He could /feel/. He knew how to love, that was the emotion that he felt for his grandmother, it was how he felt for their pet dog. Jake could feel happiness, an emotion that was specifically strong on days when his artificial skin told his mind that it was warm, and that the sun felt /good/. When his visual receptors recognized that his grandmother was smiling at him.

 

But he could also hurt. He felt pain when the red oozed from his grandmother’s torso, when the liquid stained his hands as he tried to close the wounds despite the .05% chance of her survival. Her pulse soon slowed to a stop and her body grew cold. It was supposed to be warm. It was supposed to move, her heart was supposed to beat, and the only way he saw fit to return it to that state was to let the orange flames eat away at her, to warm the weathered and thin skin that once held the soul of the one he called his grandmother. This is when he knew he could feel anger, an emotion that was fueled by the sadness, and only made more fierce by the pain.

 

When the government drones returned, he knew it was for him, he knew they had come to destroy the last of his grandmother’s mark on this earth, to remove her belongings. To remove him. So Jake fought, he fought with a fury that none had seen from android before. But it was not enough… No matter what he did, he could not quench the pain.

 

*~*

 

It was raining.

The water falling down on his head and shoulders, soaking through the tatters of his clothes, only making his urgency that much more clear. With so many of his circuits open and exposed, he could short out at any moment. He had to get out of the open, away from where the elements could turn him to nothing but a pile of rusted metal. It was when he looked up that his damaged memory chip was able to make a connection.

 

Before him was a shop, a robotic’s shop to be specific. Inside he was sure to find enough pieces to fix himself, or at least patch himself up enough to get away from what danger was chasing him... That’s what it was, wasn’t it? Something had happened, something bad, so terrible that he forced himself to move, never stopping.

 

Making his way through the alley that ran along the side, he leaned heavily against the wall until he reached the back. He hated to steal or break in, somehow, he knew better than that. But if he woke the shop owner, who knew what would happen, more then likely he would be given over to the drones and dragged away to be turned into scrap metal. The fear that zipped along his fried circuits fueled his actions as he picked the lock and slowly pushed the back door open. Thanks to the hits he had received to his noggin, his visual sensors couldn’t pick up anything past the shadows cast by the open door. Making his way further in, he found his way to a room full of spare parts and limbs, all strewn across the small space. This would have to do.

 

Closing the door, Jake slumped onto the floor, what was left of his right leg coming off in pieces, he was surprised it even lasted him this long. Wires and torn scraps fell from the open joint as Jake inspected it in the low light, he had no idea what he was doing, and was more than likely only making it worse by pulling at the wires and sharp metal bits. Jake felt the pain in his hand as he did so, the synthetic skin tearing at his palms and fingertips, mirroring the numerous cuts that littered his arms and other leg. Metal was visible there, and it made an odd feeling creep down his back to see it. His hands paused for the moment as his memory tried to come back, to salvage something, but all that came to his mind was the color red. Red. Everywhere.

 

Just like that, it was gone, and Jake was left in the cold dark room with the feeling of everything being wrong. Oh so very wrong.

 

Trying to shake the feeling, Jake refocused on the room before him, picking out the shapes of boxes, some of them closed, others spilling out or bursting with parts and pieces. Some even held full body parts, making it seem as if the hands and arms were reaching, trying to pull themselves out, the legs trying to kick free; neither thought was comforting in the least. Pushing himself up from where he sat on the dusty hardwood floor, Jake leaned on the wall and hopped and scuffled his way to the closest box. It was hard not to lose his balance as he grabbed one of the pieces by the ankle, giving it a tug. The leg was lodged in there though, fit tight between two grotesque looking arms that seemed to grab at him when he jostled the box, their bare metal fingers brushing against his skin, making his systems whir in what he could only identify as fright.

 

One last tug and Jake finally had the limb free, a smile of triumph pulling at his mouth for but a moment before he tried to compensate for the sudden jerk of his body weight. Trying to put the ghost of his missing foot down, he realized that it was there no longer, and before he could do much else, Jake was crashing to the floor, pulling a stack of boxes down on top of himself in a flurry of his own arms to catch himself.

 

When he lay on the floor, with odds and ends covering the ground, Jake didn’t dare move. After such a noise, if there was anyone here, surely they would have been down here by now to question the multitude of noises he had made. A few more seconds, and Jake had convinced himself that this was the truth of it, that or the owner of the shop must be deaf, else he would surely be found out by now. Another moment or two passed before he sat up, bits of nuts, bolts, pistons, wires, and the such falling from his chest, he cleared the area about him, shoving things aside until he found the leg had gotten him in all this trouble in the first place. Cursing the darned thing, Jake soon found himself hurriedly placing it in the empty hole where his thigh ended half waly. A dull green glow emitted from inside, peeking through the skin in a maze of lines, and it allowed him enough light for him to find a few sharp looking screws and place them along the edge of the gaping hole. With a grit of his teeth and strength that no human would be able to muster, he pushed and turned each screw through his own leg and into the replacement.

 

It was a crude method, and made for a none too appealing look, the green light glowing hotly around each screw, only pointing out the makeshift remedy, but it was all he could do for now. Jake leaned back against one of the stacks of boxes, praying it wouldn’t tip and he took a moment to rest. He had cut off any pain signals from the stump long ago, but he could still feel an odd ache, but all that was forgotten as he finally realized something that, as he had heard it described before, made his heart drop.

 

“Looks like I must give up any idea of dancing in the future,” he chuckled lightly to himself, a dreadful humor in his voice as he stared at the two left feet in front of him.

 

Shaking his head, he realized it was too late to fix his error now, he had already spent too much time in the shop’s closet as it was. Jake would just have to manage until he was at least out of this town and onto the next. Pushing himself up and off the ground, Jake placed the numb and clumsy new foot on the ground. With a groan, he added another attribute to the prosthetic’s long list of con’s. Moving forward with an odd limp, caused by the lack of the appropriate height for the damnable thing, Jake finally made it to the door of the small closet, pushing it open quietly, despite all the noise he had made just minutes before.

  
  


With a click, a light was suddenly turned on, and Jake took a second to let his eyes adjust to the new white balance of the room. It was then that he realized that there was a long and very sharp looking sword being held a mere centimeter from his chest.

  
“Who the fuck are you?”


End file.
